I think so. The few lives I learned about through various methods (like regression therapy) were quite intellectual and/or religious and either lived half in seclusion (library or temple), or ended up badly during riots of uneducated crowds. Hence my poor social skills and high mana reserves

(17-01-2012 06:56 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: REincarnation theorists are to be found in most religions, even Christianity.
Central to this speculatory theory is the idea that the monad, essential self, or soul, must live a multitude of lives in order to reach arguably the highest state of Being which is to be found in the bliss of Nirvana, a type of non real estate Heaven.
I use the word 'arguably' advisedly as it is held by some that Nirvana is not stagnant but ever evolving; hence it is simply one big stepping stone.

Up until a council held round 500 C.E.reincarnation was an integral part of Christianity, Jesus allegedly having claimed that John the Baptist was an incarnation of the O.T. prophet Elijah. At the aforementioned council it was held that this doctrine opposed that of being Saved by Grace. At least one present time Christian church, Unity, teaches reincarnation.

Where did you get that information? I can't find any original source of these claims. Everyone puts them into their books, but there are no historical references. Yes, I've read the quotes in Bible, they're there. But I can't find any evidence of how the emperor Justinian and Theodora in 533 and 553 councils of Constantinopolis executed two popes and forced the Church fathers to censor the Bible and cut out the reincarnation. That sort of weakens the argument.

(17-01-2012 06:56 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: To live a multitude of lives, as opposed to one, then Heaven or the eternal bonfire, seems preferable to the latter fundy position, despite enormous problems.
If our identities change in an analogous manner to our body cells, blood, hormones etc then the idea may have some credibility ,in my view.

If the whole Universe is in a perpetual state of flux physically and morally, and we need to experience ever changing phenomena to grow, ever onward ,with our limited free will as a mild part of the equation, then this position is at least preferable to the Boss God ordering us to toe the line.

Are we temporarily part of the cosmos or a more integral and eventual knowing part of it? At times we intuit more to our lives than extinction---tiny time T, then extinction. I do not think this attitude can be fobbed off as hopeas what I am suggesting is that worse may still be to come post physical mortem, or of course maybe better. Who knows?

I don't know who knows, but I know some of these who claim to know. The teaching of Theosophy says that we are not that which must remember or survive. We're half-animal vehicles of the higher self (soul), that sends us to incarnate and explore life on Earth. The soul does not get born or die, (except when the "nirvana" is achieved, but the soul is only second from the trinity, the higher being monad) but it contains all the incarnational experience and distills wisdom from it.

But what is supposed to happen after death, is better described in this book, with some visual aid here.
You don't have to read any of this, but there is an important central concept that you should understand to get the general idea. It's not exactly panpsychism. But let's say there are 7 material dimensions besides spacetime, as in string theory. These dimensions consist of material substances and living bodies. We, humans consist of several such bodies across several such dimensions. For example, in this dimension we live in biologic and etheric body. The neighbouring one contains our astral body and the next one is again divided by two bodies, mental and causal.
These bodies and their respective senses perceive what goes on there. But it all comes down to the lowest one, the physical brain, in which their workings are interpreted as thought and emotion. There are subtle worlds of phenomena, objects and energies, that we interpret as thoughts, and by certain focused acts of thinking we act in these bodies or even in these worlds, rather than in our physical brain only.
It's not like the astral dimension is made of emotion and desire, rather our emotional and desire apparatus (astral body) grew up in astral dimension and reacts to its phenomena accordingly.
And the quality of every body to carry and distort consciousness is determined by its quality. For example, if the astral body contains lots of coarse material from lowest sub-levels of astral world, then it "sinks" to that sub-level and it corresponds to the person having rough, violent and materialistic desires. And equivalently, a refined body consisting of finer substances of higher astral sub-levels will shelter a correspondingly refined personality.
That's what Theosophists say. It's quite a concrete notion of afterlife, in my opinion very interesting.
We can only wonder if our surrounding and permeating astral environment on this planet is an astral body of a greater being, the planetary Logos, which is in return included in the astral body of solar and galactic Logos and so on, ad infinitum for all levels of Logoi and all dimensions, and these beings once were like us and that is the path of development they chose.

(17-01-2012 06:56 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: The moral decisions we make as temporary? finite beings may well carry forth into the relms of the unknown; it is a good idea to keep this in mind. WE might hope for extinction but cannot prove it, nor can science, except in a cosmically non -substantive manner.

In Eastern religion the Buddhists largely ignore reincarnation opting for anatta or re-birth---------------(Yes, it does sound the same) but anatta holds that any "coming back" may be very vague and much less physical than the more solid, if you like, reincarnation.

I have touched very briefly on some ideas that I neither reject nor promote.
WE can be locked in to all of the religions and we can be overly locked in to science too. It is not easy to tread the middle road. I have never liked being told what to believe one way or the other; hence my prefernce for an open ended pondering.

Yes, I prefer open-ended pondering too.
I will try to explain why as a metaphor.
The problem with strict scientific worldview is, that we are allowed to go only as far as the objective, universal evidence can support us or anyone else. But this kind of evidence is only a small island in the sea of ignorance. We can equate naturalists to objective land dwellers and others who venture personally on the sea in boats, where nobody but other subjective boats can follow them. And it is a reasonable guess, that the sea of ignorance is not just an amorphous water as it seems to be on the surface. It probably is a diverse environment full of phenomena and predators, just like our island of knowledge, only unknown, untamed and uncontrolled yet. And the unknown may influence us just as much as the known, therefore it can not be safely ignored. A shark you can't see will bite you as easily as a dog you can see. But the so-called rationality or rather scientific purism demands you to attribute the shark bite to a coincidence randomly occuring as a property of sea water, until proven otherwise under controlled circumstances. Yet there are no controlled circumstances in the sea, all the sea moves and no shark will wait in place for you to measure it and double-blind test it, unless you know exactly what you're doing. So there's no evidence and who knows how did that leg fall off
What a dangerous line of thought

(18-01-2012 05:23 AM)Luminon Wrote: Yes, I prefer open-ended pondering too.
I will try to explain why as a metaphor.
The problem with strict scientific worldview is, that we are allowed to go only as far as the objective, universal evidence can support us or anyone else. But this kind of evidence is only a small island in the sea of ignorance. We can equate naturalists to objective land dwellers and others who venture personally on the sea in boats, where nobody but other subjective boats can follow them. And it is a reasonable guess, that the sea of ignorance is not just an amorphous water as it seems to be on the surface. It probably is a diverse environment full of phenomena and predators, just like our island of knowledge, only unknown, untamed and uncontrolled yet. And the unknown may influence us just as much as the known, therefore it can not be safely ignored. A shark you can't see will bite you as easily as a dog you can see. But the so-called rationality or rather scientific purism demands you to attribute the shark bite to a coincidence randomly occuring as a property of sea water, until proven otherwise under controlled circumstances. Yet there are no controlled circumstances in the sea, all the sea moves and no shark will wait in place for you to measure it and double-blind test it, unless you know exactly what you're doing. So there's no evidence and who knows how did that leg fall off
What a dangerous line of thought

There is the objective event that a leg was lost. The only way to investigate this with any success is to use the scientific method. More observations, more hypotheses, more experiments.

Quote:...scientific purism demands you to attribute the shark bite to a coincidence randomly occuring as a property of sea water...

Scientific purism requires no such thing. That would be only one hypothesis.

Subjective methods do not yield evidence and never will. The scientific method throws wide our view of reality; subjectivity is looking through a glass, darkly.

Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.

I think so. The few lives I learned about through various methods (like regression therapy) were quite intellectual and/or religious and either lived half in seclusion (library or temple), or ended up badly during riots of uneducated crowds. Hence my poor social skills and high mana reserves

(17-01-2012 06:56 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: REincarnation theorists are to be found in most religions, even Christianity.
Central to this speculatory theory is the idea that the monad, essential self, or soul, must live a multitude of lives in order to reach arguably the highest state of Being which is to be found in the bliss of Nirvana, a type of non real estate Heaven.
I use the word 'arguably' advisedly as it is held by some that Nirvana is not stagnant but ever evolving; hence it is simply one big stepping stone.

Up until a council held round 500 C.E.reincarnation was an integral part of Christianity, Jesus allegedly having claimed that John the Baptist was an incarnation of the O.T. prophet Elijah. At the aforementioned council it was held that this doctrine opposed that of being Saved by Grace. At least one present time Christian church, Unity, teaches reincarnation.

Where did you get that information? I can't find any original source of these claims. Everyone puts them into their books, but there are no historical references. Yes, I've read the quotes in Bible, they're there. But I can't find any evidence of how the emperor Justinian and Theodora in 533 and 553 councils of Constantinopolis executed two popes and forced the Church fathers to censor the Bible and cut out the reincarnation. That sort of weakens the argument.

(17-01-2012 06:56 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: To live a multitude of lives, as opposed to one, then Heaven or the eternal bonfire, seems preferable to the latter fundy position, despite enormous problems.
If our identities change in an analogous manner to our body cells, blood, hormones etc then the idea may have some credibility ,in my view.

If the whole Universe is in a perpetual state of flux physically and morally, and we need to experience ever changing phenomena to grow, ever onward ,with our limited free will as a mild part of the equation, then this position is at least preferable to the Boss God ordering us to toe the line.

Are we temporarily part of the cosmos or a more integral and eventual knowing part of it? At times we intuit more to our lives than extinction---tiny time T, then extinction. I do not think this attitude can be fobbed off as hopeas what I am suggesting is that worse may still be to come post physical mortem, or of course maybe better. Who knows?

I don't know who knows, but I know some of these who claim to know. The teaching of Theosophy says that we are not that which must remember or survive. We're half-animal vehicles of the higher self (soul), that sends us to incarnate and explore life on Earth. The soul does not get born or die, (except when the "nirvana" is achieved, but the soul is only second from the trinity, the higher being monad) but it contains all the incarnational experience and distills wisdom from it.

But what is supposed to happen after death, is better described in this book, with some visual aid here.
You don't have to read any of this, but there is an important central concept that you should understand to get the general idea. It's not exactly panpsychism. But let's say there are 7 material dimensions besides spacetime, as in string theory. These dimensions consist of material substances and living bodies. We, humans consist of several such bodies across several such dimensions. For example, in this dimension we live in biologic and etheric body. The neighbouring one contains our astral body and the next one is again divided by two bodies, mental and causal.
These bodies and their respective senses perceive what goes on there. But it all comes down to the lowest one, the physical brain, in which their workings are interpreted as thought and emotion. There are subtle worlds of phenomena, objects and energies, that we interpret as thoughts, and by certain focused acts of thinking we act in these bodies or even in these worlds, rather than in our physical brain only.
It's not like the astral dimension is made of emotion and desire, rather our emotional and desire apparatus (astral body) grew up in astral dimension and reacts to its phenomena accordingly.
And the quality of every body to carry and distort consciousness is determined by its quality. For example, if the astral body contains lots of coarse material from lowest sub-levels of astral world, then it "sinks" to that sub-level and it corresponds to the person having rough, violent and materialistic desires. And equivalently, a refined body consisting of finer substances of higher astral sub-levels will shelter a correspondingly refined personality.
That's what Theosophists say. It's quite a concrete notion of afterlife, in my opinion very interesting.
We can only wonder if our surrounding and permeating astral environment on this planet is an astral body of a greater being, the planetary Logos, which is in return included in the astral body of solar and galactic Logos and so on, ad infinitum for all levels of Logoi and all dimensions, and these beings once were like us and that is the path of development they chose.

(17-01-2012 06:56 PM)Mr Woof Wrote: The moral decisions we make as temporary? finite beings may well carry forth into the relms of the unknown; it is a good idea to keep this in mind. WE might hope for extinction but cannot prove it, nor can science, except in a cosmically non -substantive manner.

In Eastern religion the Buddhists largely ignore reincarnation opting for anatta or re-birth---------------(Yes, it does sound the same) but anatta holds that any "coming back" may be very vague and much less physical than the more solid, if you like, reincarnation.

I have touched very briefly on some ideas that I neither reject nor promote.
WE can be locked in to all of the religions and we can be overly locked in to science too. It is not easy to tread the middle road. I have never liked being told what to believe one way or the other; hence my prefernce for an open ended pondering.

Yes, I prefer open-ended pondering too.
I will try to explain why as a metaphor.
The problem with strict scientific worldview is, that we are allowed to go only as far as the objective, universal evidence can support us or anyone else. But this kind of evidence is only a small island in the sea of ignorance. We can equate naturalists to objective land dwellers and others who venture personally on the sea in boats, where nobody but other subjective boats can follow them. And it is a reasonable guess, that the sea of ignorance is not just an amorphous water as it seems to be on the surface. It probably is a diverse environment full of phenomena and predators, just like our island of knowledge, only unknown, untamed and uncontrolled yet. And the unknown may influence us just as much as the known, therefore it can not be safely ignored. A shark you can't see will bite you as easily as a dog you can see. But the so-called rationality or rather scientific purism demands you to attribute the shark bite to a coincidence randomly occuring as a property of sea water, until proven otherwise under controlled circumstances. Yet there are no controlled circumstances in the sea, all the sea moves and no shark will wait in place for you to measure it and double-blind test it, unless you know exactly what you're doing. So there's no evidence and who knows how did that leg fall off
What a dangerous line of thought

Ah Blavatsky, Hoot Koomi. the good colonel, Leadbeater et al.........I knew them well (only joking) An acqaintance of mine is President Pasadena T..S. Aust.
Will look more carefully at the issues you raise when I have time.

I like your last paragraph analogy and your quote...........could well be original.
Do you include Theosophy in that wool pulling? Hey thanks for the video! Annie, who was formerly an atheist, is one of my more preferred Theosophists.

I think we are reincarnated in the sense that our cells/atoms return to the earth when we die and will later be taken up by other living organisms (likely millions of them), but nothing like a soul or possibility of retaining memories.

Ever since I was little, a part of me wants to think that I have. Part of me wants to think I lived a couple of lives in Japan ("ancient" Japan). Sometimes I use this as an explanation for why I feel such a pull towards Japan and its culture, both old and new.

Sometimes a part of me wants to think that I lived lives on other worlds but at the same time there has never been any irrefutable proof that such a thing as reincarnation ever existed outside of our imaginations.

So what is true? Is it just my imagination? Is it just wishful thinking or perhaps a case of recalling certain thoughts or experiences incorrectly?

Heck..ever since I was a little kid, a part of me wants to think I lived a previous life or two as a "dragon" like creature. Sometimes I would use that as a possible reason why I had such an attraction to dragons even before I got familiar with what society claims dragons were like. In fact I would even get irritated at peoples stereotypical claims of dragons.

So as time went by what I once held as a possibility has now denigrated to just a mere fantasy.
Still..sometimes I feel that "inner" struggle in my mind between the part of me wants to "embrace" my former ideas and the "logical" part which admonishes me for taking any such ideas seriously if it hasn't any substance other than "feelings" and supposed vague "memories" to back it up.

Just because I want it to be true doesn't mean it is.

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return.
To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.
That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.

As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

I recently had a conversation (or tried to anyways) on the concept of reincarnation. Of course my father is of the idea that Earth is a "school" and a "hell hole". He tells me that he doesn't want to come back to it. He also feels that being alive (in the physical) is also some sort of punishment or nearly so.

I tried telling him that Earth is just a planet, it is not a prison, school or dumping ground. I tried to tell him that it is people who make problems but when I think about it, I should have asked him if he feels his new marriage is also part of that "hell hole". Is visiting with his friends also a "hell hole".
Is talking to his brother overseas part of that same "hell hole"? These are things I should have brought up to him but then again..it would be useless.

I had, at one time, tried to explain to him that -assuming for the moment that souls are real- one form is not better than the other. It's like looking at an electrical current and claiming that the "negative" cycle is better than the "positive" cycle or that clouds are better than rain.

I also should have brought to his attention that if the spirit world is so damned perfect then why would a soul feel the need to experience things -as my father thinks happens- and be born into a physical body? Why not imagine it all in the oh-so perfect and pristine spirit realm?

My life may not be perfect but I do not look at myself or others as criminals or deviants that are here to be punished.
I mean, can you honestly look at a newborn and say that he is here because he is a bad soul and needs to be "punished" for some thing that a supposed "celestial council" claimed he did in a non-provable afterlife?
Can one really condone child abuse by claiming a child is just having its "karma" worked out? (This was actually proposed in a book I once owned).

Sorry for the rant. I am feeling a bit testy right now.
Oh..and hello Mr. Woof

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return.
To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.
That is Alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange.